Bradley Floyd

Name: Bradley Floyd

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Grade: Senior

School: Cochise High School

Hobbies and Interests: Gaming, particularly fighting games and first-person shooters, music, comedy, business, video editing

Appearance: Bradley has a broad build and is larger than average, with a wide torso and somewhat meaty limbs, but is neither noticeably lanky nor stout, standing at 6 feet and weighing 202 pounds. He has more muscle than fat, being an occasional gym visitor, but he is only barely above average in terms of musculature.

He has rather flat facial features, from his forehead to his nose down to his chin, with nothing sticking out much and little curve to his facial structure. His square head shape is bordered by a chinstrap beard at the bottom and spiky brown hair at the top. Due to his poor sleeping patterns, he almost always looks slightly unkempt, and has dark bags under his grey eyes on an almost daily basis.

Bradley has no real fashion sense, and makes no effort to coordinate or match the clothes he wears. He does like loud and garish clothing items, from casual bowties to varsity jackets to pastel-coloured shirts and mustard-coloured trousers, and frequently wears designer clothing brands. If there is any method to his attire, it is to be as obnoxious as possible.

Biography: Bradley was born Bradley Grant on June 23rd 1997, his surname becoming Floyd after his parents’ divorce. His mother is Katarina Floyd, his father Jared Grant. Katarina is the youngest of three siblings, and the only daughter out of three sons. In contrast to the Floyds having Estonian blood and a generally more cosmopolitan character, Jared’s family has lived in Mohave County for over a hundred years, only a handful of family members not pursuing life-time careers in mining and ranching. The Grants largely live a rural lifestyle, and are self-confessed stereotypical rednecks.

His parents never had a particularly happy marriage. The marriage was hastily arranged within months of Bradley's conception. Bradley was conceived a few months into their dating. They were both in their late twenties when Bradley was born, their wedding held a few weeks before that date to try and provide the baby a stable home and avoid any social embarrassment from a child out of wedlock, as well as to answer some pressure for marriage from Jared’s parents. Neither had any other potential romantic partners in sight, and were initially in the mindset that they should at least try and make it work and try and build a successful marriage on what had originally been unlikely to result in a long-term relationship.

Bradley had a decent upbringing. Despite the less-than-desirable state of their marriage, Jared and Katarina proved to be loving and generally good parents. The family was able to afford all the necessities and treats and small luxuries were not uncommon, but the threat of more severe financial difficulties was never far away, mostly only prevented with the help of extended family.

Bradley was an only child, and grew up with his cousin Brady as his closest family member. Another maternal cousin, Abby, also grew up in the area, and while not as close to her as he is to Brady, they are still quite close. Both cousins are often frustrated with Bradley’s attitude and rather abrasive nature, and while Bradley tends to understand that his cousins are less provocative than him and is aware they are far from peas in a pod, he also often seems ignorant to when they are annoyed with him, as they both tend to express it in more subtle ways than he is receptive to. Abby often tries subtly steering him into more socially acceptable behaviours, efforts that generally either go over his head or provoke solid rebukes, and Brady is often unable to articulate his feelings even when Bradley does cross a line. Bradley views his relationship with his cousins as friendly and supportive, which it is, but he remains blind to the more complex and frustrating aspects of their relationships.

Bradley’s parents divorced when he was twelve. There was no particular catalyst, no massive argument, no affair, no particular turning point in the relationship. After another year of a relatively loveless marriage and deciding that staying together was doing more harm than good, they rather amicably agreed to divorce. They remained friends, and Bradley largely talks to his parents more like friends than as parents: there are well-natured insults and jovial ribbing, but he also trusts them both as confidants, as they do him.

Bradley tried to remain as stoic as possible about the situation, even in private with his parents. He was far from depressed or distraught about the divorce, handling it rather well, but he was still hurt by it. He had liked to imagine his parents as having a flawed but still fundamentally loving relationship, refusing to view it as out of the ordinary in any meaningful way. Despite this, even he had over the past couple of years gained enough mental maturity and awareness to realise that a breakdown in their marriage was not the biggest shock in the world, and while he was incredibly saddened, he was not exactly surprised. The strain in their relationship had been there from the beginning, its foundations had never been especially strong, and the relationship ending by a relatively civil mutual agreement was probably preferable to a more dramatic ending that would have happened eventually, such as an affair or massive argument.

Bradley had always aspired to be the class clown, always taken a liking to all manners of humour regardless of how crude or inappropriate they were. He had always been rather emotionally resilient and not exactly sensitive to how others took his barbs and insults. There was no real discernible cause for this, his parents not having such senses of humour themselves and always trying firmly to set him into a more suitable course. While they preferred to stay away from nature vs nurture debates, a few moments of the young Bradley making an offensive remark or an out-of-place comment meant they tried all manner of techniques and tactics to steer him towards a more socially acceptable method of humour. He always resisted, and while they never gave up and take some comfort and consolation in the few lines that he won’t cross and the agreeable aspects of his personality, they now shrug it off as an inherent part of his disposition, and do little to change it.

This same laissez-faire attitude to Bradley's behaviour has largely continued with the more troublesome parts of his life. When it comes to issues such as his poor sleeping patterns, the antisocial aspects of his behaviour, or his hard partying, they tend to ignore it or shrug it off as Bradley being Bradley, only intervening when asked to. In terms of personality, Bradley takes after his father the most. The two share similar interests and similar senses of humour. Jared knows when to draw the line with crude humour, a skill his son lacks, but often assumes his son will grow out of his more disagreeable personality traits with no effort on his part.

Katarina has often described her ex-husband as enabling Bradley's worse excesses, such as providing hard liquor for his parties and laughing at his more vulgar jokes. Jared, who used to fancy himself as something of a budding entrepreneur, also inadvertently inspired his son's entrepreneurial ambitions. Jared's attempted business schemes mostly consisted of ill-conceived attempts to fill purported gaps in the market with unconsidered business proposals nobody wanted. Several times he also "masterminded" several con schemes, only stopping because he was informed of their illegality at the last minute. Despite the uniform lack of success, this encouraged Bradley. After Bradley got in trouble in elementary school for buying school supplies and sweets in bulk and selling them to his classmates, undercutting the official school shop and making a small profit, Jared encouraged this. Bradley, with Jared's backing, often exploited arbitrage opportunities, such as buying goods in bulk or cheap from other locales, and selling them to friends and classmates for profit. He has not done this for a couple of years, though, out of laziness, and the increased difficulty in obtaining enough cheap cigarettes and alcohol, far more in-demand than the sweets and fads he sold when younger.

Bradley tried not to show his hurt at his parents’ breaking up by using humour. This was the first real moment where Bradley was able to find solace in humour and use it as a defence mechanism of sorts. It’s wrong to say that his parents’ divorce or any other issue in his upbringing created his vulgar and off-colour sense of humour, but it definitely showed its advantages in the aftermath of the divorce. Bradley to this day continues to make jokes about his family life, his upbringing, and his parents, much to their chagrin, especially as he has no qualms with exaggerating or outright lying for comic effect.

As Bradley got older, he grew to accept that ending the marriage when they did was probably the best outcome for all involved. He still gets on well with both of his parents, living mainly with his father. Despite this, he has chosen to adopt his mother’s family name, for no reason other than to be an annoyance, and is now legally known as Bradley Floyd, and has been since he was about thirteen. The similarity to the name Brady Floyd is deliberate, and Bradley celebrates the confusion and irritation it causes.

One problem Bradley has struggled with since his early teens is sleeping difficulties. He has never slept that well, problems exacerbated in recent years by a less than healthy lifestyle. He has not got an official diagnosis for insomnia, and so hesitates to use the term, but he can often spend several hours lying in bed, too exhausted to move but unable to get to sleep. When he does get to sleep, he often does not sleep for as long as desired, leaving him groggy and lethargic for the next day. The amount of time he sleeps per night varies erratically, from far too little to a little bit too long, but on average he only manages three or four hours of sleep a night. Periodically a particularly bad spell of sleep deprivation leaves Bradley uncharacteristically irritable, clumsy, anxious, and even somewhat paranoid, contrasting with his usual carefree persona.

Making his sleeping cycle even worse, a couple of instances of sleepwalking in his childhood have given him a phobia of the act. He often has a camera recording in his room at night, careful to monitor any instances of potentially hazardous sleep activity, and even any embarrassing sleep-talking statements. This phobia, which he refuses to discuss with anyone and is probably his most closely guarded secret, has worsened in recent years. The paranoia occasionally caused by his lack of sleep only exacerbates this. The concept of homicidal sleepwalking, or more generally committing assaults and even homicides while sleepwalking, terrifies him.

Bradley is a massive gaming enthusiast. Ever since he first got an old Nintendo 64 when he was about six, Bradley has loved games, although he was almost always one generation behind in terms of consoles until very recently, when he saved up for a PS4 on launch day. He is a particular fan of fighting games and first-person shooters. He has ambitions of moving to a city with a semi-decent competitive gaming scene soon, and can often spend hours practicing even the most technical and niche of moves and strategies.

Bradley is also an aspiring musician. He started learning the guitar when he was thirteen, and since then has become a rather skilled guitarist and a frequent participant in musical events throughout the school. His favourite genres are folk, soul, and jazz. Bradley is, in contrast to most of his personality, very enthusiastic and almost gleefully nerdy when it comes to both of those hobbies, showing an attention to detail and a fondness for conversation to both of those subjects, displaying an unadulterated and almost uncharacteristic gregariousness whenever conversation shifts to those topics. Building on both of these hobbies, Bradley has started video editing over the past year, creating fan made music videos to pay tribute to his favourite artists and montages of his own gaming sessions. While he has never made an effort in promoting these videos or building up a base of subscribers on YouTube, he has some technical ability with video editing software.

Comedy is Bradley’s other great passion. He is very enthusiastic about stand-up comedy and adult-oriented sitcoms in particular, preferring more recent offerings and shows that are crude and gag-based as opposed to plot-driven. In fitting with the rest of his personality, he prefers darker, edgier, and politically incorrect humour, and often cannot fully enjoy humour that he sees as outdated or tame. There is a special fondness in his heart for black comedy, which he views as a noble and necessary thing, and he is also very appreciative of more socially aware comedians such as Bill Hicks, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor. When it comes to his interests and his fear of sleep-walking, Bradley is almost a perfectionist, keen to rehearse and scrutinise his own actions, learning from his mistakes, a sharp contrast to the virtual apathy he displays towards many of his social relationships at school.

Bradley is well-known around the school for what could charitably be described as a provocative sense of humour, one that he has had in some form since childhood. He rarely means any actual vitriol, but if Bradley can say something that he’d find amusing, he’d take the opportunity, no questions asked, with very little regard for either social conventions or even his health and safety. This goes beyond merely jokes - in any serious discussion or debate of any kind, he enthusiastically takes up the role of devil’s advocate, and likes to phrase his own opinions to make them sound as extremist as possible, and when arguing with someone particularly pedantic or logical, he will deliberately deploy logical fallacies or spout wildly incorrect facts and stubbornly cling to them. He is also an avid nicknamer, and in keeping with the rest of his personality, his nicknames are often crude at best.

This is done not just out of disregard for how others feel or his own desire for cheap laughs. Partially it is done out of a desire to rebel against what he sees as political correctness gone mad, hampering good comedy and good conversation. But mainly, he actively enjoys getting reactions of offence, disgust, and anger and has developed a reputation for going out of his way to rile people up, sometimes putting a rather excessive amount of research into working out the best ways to let out a casual incendiary remark aimed at someone he views as particularly thin-skinned. Bradley enjoys being the centre of attention and he enjoys being noticed, and has found that offending people and being crude is an incredibly efficient way of doing that. A final reason is that Bradley is even more relentless in making jokes at the expense of those he sees as arrogant, or selfish, or otherwise deserving.

It’s very difficult to get an apology out of him. He has his lines that he won’t cross, but they’re just much harder to find than the average person’s. Bradley has empathy, and the few times he has pushed people to tears with his words, he has been sincerely apologetic and surprisingly gentle, but without such obvious signs of distress, Bradley is completely deaf to any hurt his comments may cause. The best way to handle him, as those who know him best have found, is to ignore him most of the time and only reel him back when he steps too far over the line, or to go toe-to-toe with him and insult him back. He respects those that he sees as thick-skinned, as not whining about something as petty and subjective as offence, and as able to give out as good as they can get. Bradley is not a hypocrite, for all his faults, and will laugh at any funny and accurate joke at his expense. He is very fond of saying that he has never been offended in his life. Even when irritable from lack of sleep, he remains thick-skinned.

As a result of this confrontational and provocative nature, Bradley has a very mixed reputation at the school. Even his friends tend to acknowledge he can be difficult, or that it can be perfectly reasonable for someone to dislike him, an assessment Bradley himself would proudly concur with. Sometimes his crass and loutish nature has landed him into fights, and he has been punched in the face a few times due to an ill-placed remark. His response to such attacks is to dig himself deeper: he will laugh it off and throw in more and more offensive remarks, and he has been lucky to avoid more dire repercussions. Bradley is a regular recipient of punishments from teachers, both for his insensitive comments and his lazy approach to work, but so far he has managed to always stop just short of the line.

Bradley is also known as something of a party animal. He enjoys going out and getting drunk to a large enough degree that it sometimes affects his grades, has affected his prospects of getting a part-time job, and has almost gotten him in trouble with the law for public intoxication. Bradley also has no qualms about using most drugs in a recreational context. While he draws the line at heroin and crystal meth and drugs with similar reputations, and is neither a habitual user nor an addict, he is often seen at parties, already drunk, smoking weed or taking ecstasy and similar drugs. Bradley does not believe that drugs are without their health effects or social consequences, but believes that he is a sensible enough user to have had no noticeable consequences from his modest use. His sleeping issues and lack of stamina and focus, while having been around for most of his life, have almost certainly been exacerbated by his relatively hard partying, as much as he is loath to admit it. Bradley's parents largely give him free rein when it comes to partying, having come to view most of their son's flaws as irreparable. Bradley's father, if anything, almost approves of his son's party life, viewing it as harmlessly enjoying youth.

Despite all of these faults and vices, Bradley has a fair number of friends. He can be funny and hasn’t got a judgemental bone in his body - the only dealbreakers when it comes to friendship with Bradley is that he won’t be friends with a boring person and an easily-offended individual won’t be friends with him. Bradley’s a very loyal friend, does not bear grudges, very tolerant of any quirks or differences or flaws in his friends, willing to be a trusted confidant and keep secrets, and not one to get caught up in any arguments or drama. He is rather slow to pick up on social subtleties and the intricacies of complex situations and occasionally lapses into bouts of irritability caused by poor sleeping habits, but this also ensures he is unlikely to be dishonest or two-faced, giving him an honesty that his friends do appreciate.

Bradley rarely thinks about any great religious or political or philosophical questions, mostly being apathetic or ignorant to such debates, but he tends to have a cynical, anti-authoritarian, small-c conservative streak. He is entirely tolerant of different worldviews, provided that their defenders can take a joke, and has never instigated or willfully participated in any argument related to those topics. When such disagreements do arise between his friends and they escalate into actual arguments, Bradley is the peacemaker, a situation even he finds weird.

After school, Bradley would love to pursue a career in gaming or music, but he privately thinks that a career in the creative fields is unlikely for him. Instead, he is pursuing what he, inexplicably, sees as the more realistic goal of becoming a successful rags-to-riches entrepreneur. The viability of this dream is not clear, though. He enjoys concocting hare-brained business schemes, has expressed an interest in finding loopholes and gaps in the market that he can exploit, and has an ambition to one day own and run a casino. However, he lacks a decent work ethic, any real understanding of mathematics or business, and any decent ideas to capitalise on. His only real relevant talent, and these have been left dormant for several years, is a knack at spotting arbitrage opportunities. He likes to say he has had many “original and promising” business ideas, but that none of the original ones have been promising and none of his promising ones have been original. Many exasperated teachers believe that he has some wasted potential in these fields, but he needs to apply himself to discover them.

Advantages: Bradley has some friends, who know him as loyal and understanding, and those friendships and his reputation with those individuals may help him on the island. It is difficult to agitate, sadden, or frustrate Bradley. There are a few hints Bradley has an untapped creative and entrepreneurial potential.

Disadvantages: Bradley is despised, or at least disliked, by many people at the school, for his irritating and provocative nature and tone deaf sense of humour. He is often blind to subtle social cues and hints. He has a poor work ethic, and often is short on stamina and focus. He has a horrible sleeping pattern, worsened by both sleeping difficulties and a fear of sleep-walking.

Designated Number: Male student No. 026

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Designated Weapon: M16 Rifle

Conclusion: Knock, knock. Who's there? Everyone. Everyone who? Everyone who fucking hates you. Good thing you have a gun B026, you're gonna need it. - Josie Knight

'The above biography is as written by General Goose. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: General Goose

Kills: None

Killed By: Kimiko Kao

Collected Weapons: M16 Rifle (assigned weapon, to Alba Reyes)

Allies: Alba Reyes, Bryony Adams

Enemies: Kimiko Kao

Mid-game Evaluation: Bradley woke up on the docks, alone with his thoughts and a cigarette. Steve Dobson, Alba Reyes, and Bryony Adams joined him in short order, though Steve was timid and fled without saying much. Alba was friendly and Bryony less so, Bradley was no fool and realized he had to deal with the consequence of his general behavior in Cochise. He tried his best to be friendly and offer his cigarettes and an alliance, though Byrony remained reluctant. However they were all able to agree on finding shelter and departed. They traveled for what is left of the night, to the gym.

They heard announcements and Bradley tried to use jokes to lighten the mood, to less than stellar reception. His own ability to joke briefly faltered when he heard of his cousin's, Abigail Floyd's, death. They found Coleen Reagan and Arthur Bernstein inside the gym. He tried to joke and make references while proposing a plan for safety, but Kimiko Kao appeared, changing the mood. Arthur promptly tried to get Bradley to stop with his delivery, which frustrated him and caused Bradley to fire back. He then found himself in a weapons drawn conflict with Kimiko, his righteous anger and stubbornness leading him to not back down from making inappropriate comments. Finally unable to take anymore, Kimiko stabbed him in the gut with her spear and ran off. Though Alba tried to aid him, Bradley was fatally wounded and passed away several minutes later, making one last joke at his own expense.

Post-Game Evaluation: Hah, he got the point! A kid kicked it with an actually decent one liner for a change. Man, if this kid hadn't died we could've used him on the writing staff here. -- Dennis Lourvey

Memorable Quotes: "Gotta say, it's an act of mighty selflessness that you're still worried about natural beauty, even though we ain't got future offspring to worry about passing it down to." - Bradley to Alba and Byrony when they refuse his cigarettes.

''“Sorry. (..) Just my silly attempt to try and stay sane, try and use gallows humour for its intended purpose.”'' - Mostly to himself, after his attempt to joke about the announced names with Bryony and Alba fall flat.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Bradley, in chronological order.

The Past:
 * Sing A Song Of Sixpence

V6 Pregame:
 * My Friends Are Assholes
 * Roots of Jade

Sadie Hawkins Dance:
 * Swipe Rite

V6:
 * The Gadfly Cometh
 * This Be The Verse

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Bradley Floyd. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * Direct overtures to the audience, a sort of external running commentary of his own actions as they happen. With Bradley there's a sort of clearly purposeful narrative that threshes the actions from the consequences and logic of the actions, creating a sort of detached voice within the narrative that allows Bradley to be his own running commentary. Apropos for the character concept as a whole, and it's one hell of a carefully crafted character concept. In the few threads he's in Bradley always makes an impact, on a meta level Bradley was the most talked about character in the opening stages of V6, across several threads with a number of characters who'd never actually interacted with him properly, for very good reason. I feel this alone speaks to the weight of his character, and how it speaks for itself. The pivot in his last... thread and a half, it's an easily followed logical culmination of what the character is. Socially unaware, stubborn about that fact, the careful intrusion of doubt into his once self confident narrative with hints of frustration and thoughts that are allowed to contradict themselves, we see the other side of the coin and everything makes sense. Bradley's concept is neatly self contained, not necessarily a good person, but understandable from the readers perspective, as Crossbow Pig mentioned in OOC discussion he somehow makes you feel sympathy in spite of yourself. His death is a neat microcosm of all he is and was shown to be, stubborn to the bitter end. Lovely work from Goose. -- Cicada Days
 * Bradley is a dick, to be sure, and if he were a real person I would detest him. As a character though, being in his head does him a lot of favors in that you get to really unpack why he is the way he is and sympathize or even empathize with it. Bradley is a realistic guy, not really a nice guy, but human and relatable even if you don't approve of his coping methods. He's determined to stay true to himself, even if it means playing into his own fatal flaw and antagonizing someone he really shouldn't. He accepts the consequences with relative grace too, all things considered. - backslash